World record tactics of the pole vault star
Armand Duplantis’s million dollar business
Updated on September 16, 2025 – 4:43 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
He keeps surpassing himself: Armand Duplantis. The Swede is not only sporty on a different level – his strategy is also financially open.
Armand Duplantis is the undisputed star in the pole vault. The Swede reaches heights from which his competitors can only dream. He also exceeded himself at the World Athletics Championship in Tokyo and set up a new world record on Monday.
Duplantis cracked the magical brand of 6.30 meters. In comparison: Vice world champion Emmanouil Karalis from Greece skipped 6.00 meters. Its personal best is 6.08 meters. After his gold medal and the new record, the Swede said at the microphone to the fans: “Thank you, that was the biggest dream for me.” The tactics of the athletics ace are open-also financially.
Duplantis set up a world record for the fourteenth time in his sporty professional career on Monday. The first time he managed this feat in February 2020 in Toruń in Poland. At that time, the 25-year-old skipped 6.17 meters in the hall and exceeded the best brand of the Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie, which had existed for six years, by one centimeter.
Since then, Duplantis has increased again and again and cracked his own records. In Glasgow it skipped 6.18 meters, 6.19 meters in Belgrade. He continued the series in Belgrade, Eugene, Clermont-Ferrand, again in Eugene, Xiamen and at the Olympic Games in Paris. Since last year, world records have been added that the young athlete in Chorzow, Clermont-Ferrand, Stockholm and Budapest had set up. Most recently, the spectators were allowed to cheer in Japan.
It is striking that Duplantis never increases his world records by two or three centimeters, although he could prove how the numbers prove. He always puts one centimeter on his personal best. But why?
That should have a financial reason. Because the Swede earns per world record. The World Athletics Association is currently awarding $ 100,000 per world record. The equivalent is around 85,000 euros. However, there is “only” $ 100,000 to win per competition. So if Duplantis jumps two centimeters higher, it would still collect $ 100,000 and not $ 200,000. Financially for Duplantis, it is more lucrative to always increase your record to one centimeter each and to cash in several times than to exhaust the maximum height and earn 100,000 euros.